


And All Smiles Died

by AmunetMana



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dark Daenerys, F/M, Not Season 8 compliant, Tower of Joy, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 05:46:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18492604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmunetMana/pseuds/AmunetMana
Summary: To find another Targaryen was more than Daenerys could have ever wished for. To already love him and be loved in return was an unthinkable bliss.But Jon Snow refuses to embrace his heritage, and Daenerys will not suffer to lose her claim to the Throne to anyone, not even her lover.History is, and always has been, doomed to repeat itself.





	And All Smiles Died

**Author's Note:**

> Dub-con for...whatever you'd describe the ending as. It's complicated, as is the whole thing.

Her arrival was heralded, as always, by the beat of wings and the scream of dragons in the air. Jon stiffened at the sound, apprehension beating through his chest, but it was laced with relief. He hated himself for the way he felt, but if nothing else, the arrival of dragons meant he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t been forgotten. There was only ever one visitor who came to see Jon, and he couldn’t be anything but happy for just a taste of human company, no matter whose company it was. He crossed the room, looking to the window and the skies beyond. There was one window in the tower of joy, and that was where Daenerys always appeared.

 

There was no other way in, not anymore. The entrance that Eddard Stark had once rushed through to find his sister was gone now. Nothing was left of it but rubble and warped stone, twisted in the intense heat of dragon fire. Jon had had a wonderful view from the back of Daenerys’ dragon as the wooden door had first burst into flames before being twisted and consumed, leaving him no way out. No way in or out for him, or anyone.

 

For anyone not riding a dragon.

 

“I can’t stay long,” Daenerys said by way of greeting, swinging her legs through the window. “The battlefields are quiet for now, but our enemies are regrouping. Tyrion has taken the lead in strategizing for now, but…” she smiled, skirts falling into place around her calves as she smoothed them, “well. A dragon or two can never hurt to have, can they not?”

 

Jon stared at her, expression blank.

 

“I think they can hurt a great deal to have,” he settled on. Daenerys took the words with good humour, crossing the room to take his hands. She squeezed them firmly, before reaching up to cup his cheeks, and kissed him deeply.

 

“We’re so close,” she whispered against his lips as she pulled back, pressing their foreheads together. “The battles are almost won. The Seven Kingdoms will be united, and I will rule them. Finally, I can truly make this world a better place.”

 

Jon closed his eyes.

 

 

 

_(“A better place,” Jon spluttered in disbelief. “Is that what you call this? Burning armies? Burning fathers and sons?”_

_Eddard had never told his children about his brother and father, nor about his sister, anything more than fleeting details. Catelyn had once been engaged to Brandon, who little Bran was named for. Rickard, who gave Rickon his name. How they’d ridden south to save his sister._

_How they’d never come back._

_It was Maester Luwin who had been left to treat them with the details, horror filled as they were. It had been different, Jon thought, to hear it as children. When they had no real knowledge of the world, and couldn’t imagine, couldn’t empathise with far off horrors that befell strangers they could only picture with their father’s face._

_It was different after Jon’s hand had been seared by the fire that had saved him and Commander Mormont from the wight in his chambers._

_It was different when he’d discovered it was Sam’s father and brother. Jon wished desperately that it hadn’t taken that long to realise the enormity of what Daenerys had done. The power she wielded.)_

 

 

 

 

“Who did you burn today?” Jon asked instead, grasping her by the wrists to pull her hands away. He only touched her clothes these days, if he could help it. Daenerys laid her hands on him often enough already. Daenerys frowned, seemingly more at him refusing her touch than at the question.

 

“We took the Stormlands,” she told him, tugging him gently to follow her to the bed before sitting down. “Without the Baratheon’s rule, smaller lords have been squabbling over the land. Causing suffering. They banded together surprisingly well when we approached, but…” she shrugged. “I’ll appoint a new Lord. One who will rule correctly and won’t engage in petty squabbles with rival lords to the detriment of their people.”

 

She always made it sound so easy, Jon thought tiredly. He realised she was looking at him, waiting for a response. He sat a little straighter, floundering for a reply.

 

“…It’s difficult to imagine,” he settled on, “there’s never any sign of the fighting this far south. It’s…” it was like it wasn’t happening at all, truthfully. Jon could so easily imagine the screams, see the bodies as they fell, slaughtered by dragons and Dothraki and Unsullied. Even if every time he pictured it, he always found himself crushed by soldiers, unable to climb his way out, or even breath for the scent of blood and the caking of mud. He used to try and reach to Ghost, all the way in the North across more miles than he could count. But, whenever he reached out his mind, it wasn’t the familiarity of his direwolf, but flames that rushed in to meet him. The dragons surged forward into his skull, trying to push into his mind the way he used to flow into Ghost’s so easily.

 

He’d stopped trying to warg soon enough, after that.

 

Daenerys was looking at him with something like amusement, or apprehension, her head tilted to the side. She seemed to reach a decision, opening her mouth to speak.

 

“You are welcome to join me, whenever you wish. You have your armour.”

 

She gestured towards the corner, but Jon refused to follow the line of sight. He stared at the ugly affair of oily black metal, complete with rubies studded in the shape of the Targaryen dragon long and often enough as it was. _Rhaegar’s rubies_. Arya had loved the tale of Rhaegar’s rubies, Jon thought miserably, lying at the bottom of that river.

 

 

 

 

_(“Just like your father wore,” Daenerys told him proudly, as though such a thing would please him. “Imagine it. Two Targaryens, still alive! After all these years.”_

_“You had a living brother,” Jon pointed out, and Daenerys’ expression had hardened quickly._

_“Viserys was no dragon,” she said stonily, “the last dragon was Rhaegar, and then me. But you’re Rhaegar’s blood – my blood. You are a dragon as surely as I, and together – ”_

_“I am not a dragon,” Jon snapped. “I am a Stark – ” he faltered, before his gaze too hardened, “I am a Stark of Winterfell, our sigil is a direwolf, and I was King in the North.”_

_He stared at her in loathing, every word she said pushing them further apart.)_

 

 

 

“If I was going to join you, don’t you think I would have done it by now?” Jon asked softly, looking down into his lap, eyes still firmly averted from the perfect replica of Rhaegar’s armour. Sometimes Jon wondered if the armour would fit the moment he put it on, or if Daenerys would bring a smith to him, to refine the metal, to curve it to his body and seal him inside. A prisoner in his armour just as much as he was a prisoner in the tower. Daenerys liked for his prisons to be comfortable, Jon thought. “I don’t want to burn people. I don’t want to fight in wars that never needed to happen in the first place.”

 

More childishly, he didn’t want anyone to ever see him wearing anything bearing a dragon sigil. He remembered how his heart had pounded, when Sansa had pressed the direwolf stamped cloak into his arms. He remembered wearing armour with twin wolves embossed in the metal. Those wolves meant _everything_ to him. Being a Stark, being a _real_ part of that family meant everything, and always had. To imagine being part of any other family was a betrayal of everything he’d ever known.

 

 

 

 

_(“You will see it my way,” Daenerys promised, leaning in to kiss Jon on the cheek. “The blood of the dragon is strong. Drogon sensed it in you – I sensed it in you. One day you shall wear that armour, and ride in the skies beside me.”_

_She stroked his cheek, thumb moving gently back and forth._

_“Prince Consort of the Seven Kingdoms,” she murmured, wonderingly. “We will rule this land together, Jon. We will be just, and good, and we will bring peace.”_

_“I never even wanted to be King in the North,” Jon whispered back. “I never wanted the Seven Kingdoms.”)_

 

 

 

 

“You know I do not fight battles that do not need to be fought,” Daenerys said, brow furrowing. “The Seven Kingdoms are mine by right – it is those who fight against me who bring more and more pain to the people here. I don’t _want_ to burn people, Jon. I want to save them.” Frustration clouded over her face. “So many people have died so _needlessly_ over nothing at all. They blame my brother for all that happened, when he had done _nothing_ wrong.”

 

Tentative happiness stole across her face as she regarded Jon, searching for something in his face. Jon wondered what she was thinking sometimes, and whether she wondered the same about him.

 

“You don’t need to be afraid of who you are,” Daenerys told Jon gently. “I know…I know when you first heard, that it was a shock. It shocked me too! But we fell in love long before that. It was like we already _knew_.” Jon shuddered, trying to swallow back the motion. “There is nothing for you to be afraid or ashamed of, Jon. Your mother and your father, _my brother_ ,” Daenerys continued earnestly, eyes shining, “they loved each other too. You were born here, from that love. Your own cousin confirmed it!” her hand slid along his knee further up to his thigh, and Jon tried not to flinch at the touch.

 

“Your brother locked the Lady Lyanna here,” Jon replied, wrestling his tone to evenness. “And the Lady Lyanna died from what he did to her.”

 

Daenerys knew nothing of the story between Rhaegar and Lyanna. She didn’t want to know. As surely as Jon had grown up knowing that the Tower of Joy was and always had been Lyanna Stark’s prison, so Daenerys had so quickly accepted it as the princess’s tower in a song. Proof of her brother’s goodness, proof of the lies and the evil of the Usurper.

 

“Does it make you feel closer to your brother?” Jon asked before he could help himself, lips curling in a sneer around his words, “Locking a Stark up in this tower?”

 

Daenerys did not reel backwards in shock. She had far more self-control than that. But her eyes blew wide, and her back snapped ramrod straight, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Jon met her stare, taking in every inch of her rage and indignation like a man starved. It was a dangerous game, angering her. But some days… _most_ days, it was all Jon had to rebel with. There was no one else but her, no one in the tower, and if there were any guards stationed outside, Jon never saw them. He was alone in his tower.

 

Many days, Jon wondered if this was how Sansa had felt, in King’s Landing. His every physical comfort was met; he had food and water, he saw the sun come and go and slept in a comfortable bed. But his heart also pounded like prey in a trap, and he shook with the fear that at any moment any illusion of safety he had could be ripped away, and he would be at the mercy of his captor. Powerless, the both of them. Tyrion had told him more of her time there than Sansa ever had, and he’d spoken of her small rebellions in casual passing. They’d seemed so tiny then, to someone who had never had to please their captor. Wildlings could drag you to their camps and threaten you with death. But they never asked you for pretty words or a smile as they did so. They never claimed to love you.

 

“Maybe Starks who venture south are doomed to be captured,” he ventured further, more to himself than anything as he failed to take in Daenerys’ reaction. “My father, prisoner in King’s Landing. Sansa was a hostage there. Lyanna Stark…” he looked down at his lap. “The lone wolf dies but the pack survives. No wonder everyone tries to divide us.” _And we keep being stupid enough to divide ourselves. With petty squabbles and unspoken resentments and dreams we never see for the nightmares they are._

 

Jon dreamed of Sansa, sometimes, of the girl who’d never cared for him when they were children. Sansa, who had warned him not to go south. Jon thought nowadays that going even further North, all the way to the Wall and beyond had been the smartest thing he’d ever done. No Stark who travelled south ever ended well.

 

_Eddard Stark, dead._

_Robb, dead._

_Sansa, a hostage._

_Rickon dead, and Arya –_

 

He dreamed of Arya, who had been everything to him. He’d barely seen Arya, only a glimpse before everything had been ruined. She had been lost for so long, it was impossible to know what had befallen her. She’d still had Needle, the sight of the blade shooting through Jon’s heart as surely as if she’d stabbed him with it. _She’d used it_ , he realised, and the pain doubled. _Not just in play. Not just in training. His little sister had killed with the sword he had given her as a gift._

 

He dreamt of Bran with dark wings and dark words, and Rickon with arrows in his back and a dead wolf at his side. Robb too often stood with Rickon those nights, just as full as arrows as his little brother, but with his wolf headless, and a snarl on his own new, grotesque face.

 

In Dorne, the depths of winter did not match even the summer snows of the North. Jon pictured snowflakes spiralling from the sky in lazy drifts, watching them catch in his siblings’ hair and his own. He missed the cold desperately, dressed as he was now day to day in sleeveless tunics with bare feet, padding around the sparse rooms of the tower with nothing to do but suffer with his thoughts and wish desperately to be anywhere else.

 

In the nights, Jon curled up tightly in bed, trying to hide from his dreams and failures that refused to leave him be. The bed Lyanna Stark had once rested in was piled high in furs, brought by Dany shortly after she had brought him, to keep him comfortable in his new cell. It was a token gesture, more than anything. The furs were far more than what was needed even in the chill of night, but every night without fail, Jon pulled them around himself like armour against reality. He buried his face deep in the pelts, curled up in a ball, and tried to pretend as much as he could that he was home.

 

Home with Eddard Stark, the only father he’d ever known. Even home with Catelyn Tully Stark, whose hatred brought more comfort than it did pain these days, because her hatred proved beyond doubt that he must be Eddard’s son. Jon walked with them all through the crypts of Winterfell, past Lyanna’s grave, past Brandon and Rickard. Sometimes Uncle Benjen would join them, with shining blue eyes. Sometimes, even Theon Greyjoy was there. Jon wrapped the dead and the damaged around him like furs on a cold night, filling the halls of Winterfell with silence and a misery so familiar it could only come from a family long lost to memory.

 

 

( _Jon imagined sometimes, painfully, that Daenerys was right. That Bran was right. Rhaegar loved Lyanna and Lyanna loved him. Whilst war raged around them, Lyanna hid away here, and gave birth to a son. And that son killed her coming into the world. Jon harmed every mother he met, it would seem. He’d killed one and been a stain on another’s life.)_

 

 

 

_(Sometimes he dreamt of rough, forever-warm scales beneath his fingers, the beat of wings behind him and the wind in his hair as he laughed with giddiness at the absolute freedom of the skies._

_That scared him more than the dead ever could.)_

 

 

 

Jon looked Daenerys straight in the eyes. “How do you expect me to lo…to carry _any_ kind of affection for you when you keep me from my family?” he asked, bleakly.

 

Daenerys moved to grip his hand, leaning in close. “We are family,” she told him, eyes hard even as she spoke with urgency, her grip warm and comforting but for its unwanted presence. “We are dragons. The last two dragons, and we belong together. All we have is each other.”

 

“I have my sisters,” Jon returned coldly, pulling away from Daenerys. “I have my brother. And you took me from them before we were even truly reunited!”

 

Daenerys drew back too, gathering herself into the armoured disdain of a Queen. It was like a command that shot straight through Jon’s being – the desire to drop to his knees before her, to stare up at her and recapture the awe he’d felt lying injured on the boat as she’d sat beside his bed. He’d told he he’d kneel for her then – he’d meant it. He almost meant it now, even as poison dripped from her haughty words.

 

“You should try to remember your _cousins_ well,” Daenerys told him, eyes blazing. “I hold off attacking the North because of my love for you but make no mistake. My mercy for them has its limits, and at the end of this war they will all bend the knee, or they will face my dragons just like every other traitor.”

 

 

 

_(“No! No, you can’t, you can’t attack them, don’t burn them! Promise me, promise me you won’t burn them! Promise me, Dany!”)_

 

 

 

Jon had tried pleading. He had been met with eyes like chips of amethyst and the hard line of a mouth that he had loved so much not even so long ago. A mouth that could so easily curl like a sneer around such pretty Valyrian words. _Dracarys_. _How long had it been since then? Since he’d loved that mouth?_

 

“I always remember them,” Jon told her quietly. He didn’t say brother or sisters again but they both heard it anyway. Daenerys’ hands clenched and unclenched, and Jon could see her doing her best to swallow the rage.

 

“I wish to lay with you tonight,” Daenerys said briskly, choosing to ignore their words as if the exchange had never taken place. She stood and began unlacing her tunic. “I had wanted my visit to go better before we did, but perhaps this will relax you. We are both caught up in the stresses of war, even here in Dorne. It will do us good, to be together.”

 

Her tunic and skirt fell away with the tug of her laces, and the boots and leggings followed quickly enough. They fell as easily from her hips as the words fell from her mouth. Jon pictured her on the throne – would she still wear that which she’d conquered them in? Or would she wear the silk dresses Sansa had once been so enamoured with, that he had wanted to see on Ygritte so badly? He stood, pressed his hands onto Daenerys’ shoulders to turn her. She let out a little huff of annoyance, but smiled, tension draining from her shoulders as familiarity wrapped around them.

 

A ghost of a smile past Jon’s lips before grief and panic pushed it down, and he slowly pulled the silver clasps from her hair and began gently unwinding the plaits crowning her head. Daenerys had beautiful hair, for all that it made her seem unearthly. Maester Aemon was the only Targaryen Jon had ever known, and his hair was long white from old age than from any Valyrian blood. Daenerys’ never seemed to knot, falling in its perfect curls around her shoulders, strands streaming pretty as moonlight over her bare shoulders.

 

Daenerys never went outside without braids in her hair. Never faced battle without her crown, without the Dothraki victories she’d won.

 

 

 

_Qarth. Astapor. Yunkai. Meereen._

_Highgarden. Casterly Rock. Dorne. The Stormlands._

 

 

 

Jon unwound the conqueror until a teenage girl stood before him, and her gaze was flooded with affection. She was always affectionate, with Jon. Always affectionate, right up to the moment he refused her anything.

 

She stripped him in turn, slowly, fingers skating over the planes of his body as she did so. She touched his scars, and he convulsed. She stroked his arms, the sides of his body down to his waist, and pulled their hips together taut. When they kissed, Jon could almost imagine they were back on the boat, before he heard his brother betray him more deeply than he could have known, before Arya’s gaze had been shuttered, and Sansa’s eyes were like ice. Before Daenerys turned on him like he’d known all along and had betrayed _her_.

 

Before she’d decided she wanted him anyway, had taken him as she’d pleased, and trapped Jon in a song that had been sung for years already, and which he already knew the ending to.

 

Daenerys had lain beneath him their first night together on that boat, but it transpired that her favoured act was to ride him at her leisure, undulating above him with slow, easy movements. A useful preference, given Jon’s disinterest in the act recently. It wasn’t that she didn’t care for his pleasure; she did, watching him with dedicated eyes and firm hands until he pushed against her like he still wanted it, until he twisted his face to press into the pillows and had to be guided back by Daenerys’ touch.

 

He came first, her walls clenching around him until he cried out, burning with shame and pleasure both. She peaked soon after, a whispered gasp half swallowed as she bent over him, hands braced at his sides. Her hair still shone like moonlight, and Jon reached up to touch it with shaking fingers. In the sun, or by fire light, sometimes it almost looked golden, warm and gentle. Jon preferred it silver now; silver for a girl alien to Westeros, and alien to him. As far removed from reality as he could imagine her.

 

Daenerys didn’t pull away from him straight away, instead she kissed him, again and again, trying to coax ever more from him than what she’d already taken. Jon didn’t have the energy to pretend, but neither did he have the energy to twist away from her. Frustration soon tinged the kisses, and she nipped at his jaw, trying anything to make him respond. At last she pulled back, and Jon turned his gaze to see frustrated tears in her eyes, even as she refused to let them fall.

 

“You should stay here tonight,” he told her instead, and with the way her lips tightened into a thin line, it was hard to say what she was thinking. But she pulled off him at last and lay down on the bed beside him.

 

“I told you I couldn’t stay long,” she whispered from beside him. Outside the window, there was a low whine from her dragons, along with a heavy thud as they too settled down for the night, curled around the tower without a door.

 

“I’m asking you to stay anyway,” Jon replied, twisting until he could tug at the furs, dragging them over both himself and Daenerys. She caught his fingers as they brushed close pulling the furs up around her shoulders. Jon pulled them away, gently, but the moment he lay down they were back again, resting against the skin over his heart, rubbing unconsciously at the scar there. Jon felt bile rise in his throat and tried his best to swallow it. He wondered, sometimes, if he hadn’t died, would he have ever fallen in love with a Queen who brought so much death in her wake?

 

As if she’d heard his thoughts, Daenerys’ whisper came through the dark.

 

“I do love you,” she told him, voice heartbreakingly soft.

 

Jon stared into the dark and remembered the tight braids of the Khaleesi-Queen. He remembered the fall of her loosened hair, and the vulnerability in her eyes that he knew without question that she only ever let him see.

 

“Do you even still believe in love?” Jon asked, quietly.

 

Daenerys went still beside him, her fingertips feather light on his chest.

 

Finally, a quavering voice came once more from the dark.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Jon curled onto his side, pulling away from Daenerys. He closed his eyes, pressed them into the pillows, and wondered if Lyanna had still believed in love at the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_“No you can’t! You can’t!”_

_He screamed and screamed; fingers wrapped desperately around the spines of the dragon’s neck._

_“Dany don’t do this! Dany, please!”_

_But her lips pursed, her eyes full of sorrow, and she shoved him, hard._

_Jon fell backwards, and fire and stone exploded around him._


End file.
